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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23602345">The Girl</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/221brothermine/pseuds/221brothermine'>221brothermine</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Dark fic, Hurt/Comfort, set before The Mandalorian TV show</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-03 01:15:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Rape/Non-Con, Underage</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,318</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23602345</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/221brothermine/pseuds/221brothermine</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The Mandalorian's job brings him to a Coruscanti night club. He won't concern himself with its unethical activities. Or at least, he shouldn't.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Girl</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There was a loophole in the Coruscati laws about prostitution. Except they didn’t call it that, or indentured servitude, or anything else that might suggest what it really was. Most often, Mando heard it referred to as <em>the trade</em>. The workers were mostly human, mostly female. It was private, and never explicitly advertised. It gave ease of mind to those who frequented the night clubs, especially to the higher-ranking officials that pulled the strings in the city’s government. </p><p> </p><p>It wasn’t his business. The galaxy was far and wide in crime. He had his own job to do, and there was no use getting pulled in. If Mando had turned his head and put a stop to every crime and act of evil he saw, he wouldn’t get anything done and be out of a job. It would have taken him ages. Plus he was pretty sure it was someone else’s job to do that. Law enforcement. And he heard rumors of the so-called Jedi Order, some cult meant to restore order to the galaxy. Didn’t sound very credible. But that also wasn’t his business.</p><p> </p><p>When sex became a business on Coruscant, most of the planet had been occupied by the Cerean, who aged faster than humans. Twelve years was considered their age of adulthood, so they could start voting in local elections and earn their own money, as well as work in clubs, if they so chose. This worked fine for a while. Twelve-year-old Cerean were fully matured into their bodies and their minds. It was a fair business. But when humans and other aliens began to migrate to Coruscant, it did not take long for someone to notice the age restriction did not specify species, and so human girls and other species who aged similarly to humans were brought in as young as twelve, even if they had not yet matured.</p><p> </p><p>Mando had heard, but he hadn’t seen. Not until a particular mission brought him straight inside a nightclub. </p><p> </p><p>The job should have been simple enough. He was tracking the target for a couple of days. Assignments were coming in slow ever since the galaxy’s head turned to remaining Imperial forces tampering with planets Vardos and Naboo and wondering if their planet was next. He had the time.</p><p> </p><p>The guy was a drunkard and came to the club every night. Mando didn’t follow him in — too noticeable with the armor. You’d think there would be more flexibility in that department, given the discretion required for the job, but one had to make due. Some did complain, and frequently. The itching was the worst. Mando preferred it on. It was a shield. He was always safer this way, and he had to remember where he came from. Who took him in when no one else would. And deceit wasn’t really part of the code of honor they upheld. He wouldn’t want to pretend to be a client anyway.</p><p> </p><p>Today he would go in. The client wasn’t dangerous, as he thought he might’ve been. Former war veteran for the Republic. Owned weapons and carried a concealed blaster with him at all times, on the left boot, but the guy was too slow to pose any real threat. The war had left him with a stub leg and he winced every time he took a step. If he was resistant, the capture should be easy enough.</p><p> </p><p>When Mando stepped into the club, a guard grunted at him at the door. “What’s your deal here, Mandalorian? Business? Pleasure?”</p><p> </p><p>Mando didn’t reply, surveying the establishment. A narrow spiraling staircase by the door led up to rooms on the second floor. <em>Pleasure</em>. Ahead of him was the gambling table where several patrons were sitting and cackling, throwing their heads back. Chips and several forms of currency were piled up in the middle. Looked like a big night. <em>Business.</em></p><p> </p><p>“You must be bone dry. You sure your balls haven’t shriveled up and died in there?”</p><p> </p><p>Mando cocked his head at the guard. “I need the room of Elizeer Brux.”</p><p> </p><p>The guard chewed like he had gum in his mouth. “You’re either a client, or you’re not. Not your business who goes in and out.”</p><p> </p><p>“Fine.” Mando strode toward the staircase. If he wasn’t told, he’d find out himself. The guard shouted behind him and scrambled to follow, as he had expected. When he had caught up with him at the stairs, Mando spun around, yanked the man closer by the arm and used his other hand to crack his head on the metal column of the staircase. He crumbled to the ground, groaning. Several surrounding patrons looked at the scene, startled.</p><p> </p><p>More guards would show up in a moment, so Mando took the stairs two at a time. He held the railing as he went.</p><p> </p><p>When he reached the top, a whole corridor of rooms lay out in front of him. Most of them were closed. The nearest one had moans coming from inside. Hard way it is then.</p><p> </p><p>He kicked down the first door. It rocked off its hinges and the wood splintered down the middle. The female Twi’lek straddling the human man below her turned around and gasped.</p><p> </p><p>Mando stepped inside, surveying the man. He was beet red and grey haired. Not the one.</p><p> </p><p>The next door he felt less decent about breaking down — it was two Chiss women, half naked and clearly employed here, tearing away dirty sheets from the bed.</p><p> </p><p>The next room was empty. Number four had a Bothan crying into the arms of a human woman. Mando wasn’t sure if this was more disturbing than the first room.</p><p> </p><p>The next two doors were empty. He turned a corner to find number seven. This part was quieter. A darker hall separated from the hall he came from with a bead curtain. Tacky. Also suspicious. What did they have to hide?</p><p> </p><p>He slammed open number seven with his foot, and he knew he had found his target immediately. Elizeer Brux sat on a large, ornamental bed with a young girl in his lap. He gaped at the Mandalorian, neither screaming or running.</p><p> </p><p>The girl looked at him with wide, teary eyes. She must’ve been no older than fourteen.</p><p> </p><p>“The hell is this? You a performer? You’re in the wrong room.”</p><p> </p><p>Mando approached him with careful footsteps and threw the holoprojector at Brux’s feet, where it landed on soft white carpet. “Come with me.”</p><p> </p><p>Brux’s grip on the girl tightened, and it must’ve hurt her shoulder because she cried out in pain. “You interrupted me.”</p><p> </p><p>Mando clenched a fist and put a hand against his holster. Is that what was important to him? To finish this...whatever this was? She was far too young, and skinny to the bone, probably malnourished, and she looked at Mando like he might take her, too. Though something told Mando it wasn’t a cryo-freeze she was afraid of.</p><p> </p><p>“I can take you warm, or I can take you cold.” He moves as if to take out his blaster. There would be no waiting. Especially for whatever Mando has interrupted here.</p><p> </p><p>“I’ll go if you let me finish. I paid good money to be here. She cost a fortune.” He was swaying, shaking his fist in the air. His lack of fear made sense — he was drunk out of his mind.</p><p> </p><p>“No.” Mando said. “Come. Now.”</p><p> </p><p>Brux growled and reached for the blaster in his left boot, but as predicted, was too slow. Mando shot his hand, piercing the skin. Brux cried out in pain and released the girl, who sprinted from his grasp and straight into the ‘fresher room. She slammed the door shut and Mando heard her turn the lock.</p><p> </p><p>Brux clutched his injured hand with the other and swayed back and forth, glaring at Mando. “Fuck you. You and your kind are monsters!”</p><p> </p><p>Mando was at his side in a moment, handcuffs over his hands, pulling him up by the scruff of his collar and dragging him out of the room and down the stairs. The owner of the establishment, a Barbadelan with huge, red swaying robes, stopped him in his tracks at the foot of the stairs.</p><p> </p><p>“Hey. You are disrupting business, Mandalorian. I could have you arrested!”</p><p> </p><p>Whatever business Mando had disrupted, he wasn’t sorry for it. He pushed past him, and the owner growled, but none were brave enough to follow and attack.</p><p> </p><p>He dragged Brux kicking and cursing all the way to his ship, and then the cryo-freeze took care of the rest. His hand had bled all the way there, but the freeze should put a stop to the bleeding. If he died – well, Mando had given him a choice. He wasn’t feeling particularly sorry about that either.</p><p> </p><p>He began checking the ships vitals. Fuel would be good for another day, but he would need to restock soon. That and most of the food supplies, though he could live off them for another week. He’d take care of that and basic repairs on Nevarro.</p><p> </p><p>He begin flipping the takeoff switches, but a loud clanging, like something metallic and heavy falling within the ship, stopped him cold. He relinquished his blaster from its holster and exited the cockpit into mainhold of the ship. It looked empty. He quietly made his way down the corridor and stopped dead in his tracks, cocking his blaster when he saw a pair of bare feet underneath the last box containing a carbonite-frozen target. They were trembling and thin. Human. <em>Could it be – ?</em></p><p> </p><p>When he rounded the corner, pointing his gun, the girl screamed and cowered back. She had her arms wrapped around herself, shaking like a leaf, eyes shut tight in anticipation of him shooting. He didn’t move, stunned at her presence. It was the girl from the club. The one on Brux’s lap who had run to the bathroom.</p><p> </p><p>“What are you doing here?” he asked. Slowly, her eyes opened. Tear tracks ran down her dirty face.</p><p> </p><p>“Please don’t shoot me,” she whispered.</p><p> </p><p>“Tell me why you’re here, then,” he commanded. Something in him stung to say it. She was so young and scared out of her mind. Still, she had snuck onto his ship. He didn’t know her intentions or who she worked for.</p><p> </p><p>She let out a sob, snot running down her face. She covered it with her hands and broke down in tears, not even looking at him anymore. He fractionally lowered his weapon, then put it away completely.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>It took a while before she would talk. But she told him her name was Elra, and that she had snuck onto the ship just as docking bay was closing. That thing always took too damn long to close. She greedily took the bone broth and protein rations he put under her nose and relaxed once she had eaten her fill, no longer crying.</p><p> </p><p>She said she had no parents. No known relatives. He told her he would drop her off at the nearest habitable planet with a port.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>He went very still when she got up from her chair to touch his helmet. He thought it was a child’s curiosity, but then she climbed into his lap, hands on either side of his helmet. “Can – can I stay?”</p><p> </p><p>She sat down on his crotch and canted her hips against it, once, clumsily, like she wasn’t sure what she was doing. He couldn’t feel much through the metal. Her fingers went to the fabric underneath his helmet, and that he <em>could </em>feel. He grabbed both her wrists, locking them in his grip. She looked afraid, searching for his eyes through the mask. She wouldn’t find them.</p><p> </p><p>“I’ll—I’ll do anything you want.” She swallowed, her dark eyes terrified.</p><p> </p><p>He got up, and she fell out of his lap. He held her in place by holding her wrists. “I’m not taking passengers. Or slaves.”</p><p> </p><p>He let go off her wrists and stalked away, back to the cockpit. He shut the door, not wanting a reoccurrence of whatever just happened. The girl was desperate. And she had been taught to offer herself off to the nearest person for survival. Food and shelter were easy things to offer for a lifetime of servitude. She was probably one of several. And with the Empire’s collapse, less and less time and effort was delegated to looking out for girls like her. Whatever planet he left her on, it didn’t matter. She would be scraps for some man’s teeth.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>The next day she shot a blaster hole through a wall. It didn’t damage any wires, but her hands were grabby, and he had to growl at her to stay away from the weapons wall. She grabbed one only out of curiosity, she claimed, throwing up her hands in innocence, and she had looked shaken up about doing it, so he gave her the benefit of the doubt. But she was lithe on her feet, and he wondered if she had been trying to nick it.</p><p> </p><p>She shivered when she accidentally elbowed the carbon freeze button and the cool steam filled up the mainhold. He sighed, going back to piloting, hoping she would stay put.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>He let her cozy up in a bunk bed toward the back of the ship. It’s where he usually wound down. It was a tight fit, but comfortable, the cushions soft on his back. He gave her a blanket he had stowed away.</p><p> </p><p>It’s none of his business — none of this is — but he heard her crying sometime later in the night. He tried to ignore it, but after a while, it became like talons scratching down a metal surface. He went to the back.</p><p> </p><p>“Hey, kid,” he said. She didn’t budge, whimpering and tossing in her sleep.</p><p> </p><p>“Wake up,” he repeated, louder. She kept tossing and turning, as if the voice had disturbed her more. There was sweat beading on her forehead. “Wake—”</p><p> </p><p>She startled awake, eyes wide, chest heaving. She looked around and when she spotted him, she crawled back, as if he had been the nightmare in her mind.</p><p> </p><p>“Relax. It’s me.” It was only an attempt at reassurance. His presence wasn’t exactly a comfort to most, let alone to her. He was a stranger, and a dangerous one at that.</p><p> </p><p>But she sighed, her muscles relaxing, though she still clung tightly to the blanket. “I’m not used to sleeping alone. At the house, the sisters slept together.”</p><p> </p><p>Is that what they called themselves? A sisterhood? Not exactly a familial community. But what did he know about the kind of bonds they made, suffering the same plight? Maybe a thing like that was no different from the Guild. Not warriors, but still, people with a collection of scars. He could see some literally marring her body, her arms, her shoulders, one on her chin, standing out a lighter color against her darker complexion.</p><p> </p><p>“We’re almost at Chandrila. Sit tight.” <em>And don’t touch the weapons wall</em>, he wanted to add, but he thought his tone communicated enough, because she nodded fast.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>She tried to give him back the blanket at the loading dock. He glanced at it and droned, “I don’t need it.”</p><p> </p><p>He didn’t. It was just a rag stowed away in the storage space next to the bunk.</p><p> </p><p>She swallowed and clutched it tighter to herself. “Okay.” When she exited, it looked like she was walking on wobbly legs, but he realized she was just shivering. She stopped, and Mando heaved a sigh. Now what?</p><p> </p><p>She turned around, still huddling in the blanket, looking at him with desperate eyes. Then she ran up to him to him.</p><p> </p><p>“Thank you,” she murmured. She stood on her tiptoes and planted a kiss on his helmet. He didn’t move. He swore he could feel it, the heat of her skin against the metal, right over where his own lips were. He wanted to put a firm hand on her shoulder and push her away, but his body wasn’t obeying his brain, and she was already running back down, bare feet touching down on the dirt ground of the planet.</p><p> </p><p>He felt strange inside his suit for the first time. It was like he didn’t have armor on at all. Anyone else, and he would have already had them in a headlock. She was too scrawny to do much fighting with, and he had no reason to do it, but he didn’t understand how he had frozen like that. It was something he wasn’t used to. This wasn’t exactly in the training manual.</p><p> </p><p>He hit the button to retract the landing dock. He lingered for a moment, making sure no one else got a wise idea about getting into his ship. It angered him, that she had delayed him. He was doing her a favor. His next two assignments were ready, and this was already a pay-cutting delay. But his job was done. He didn’t have to see her again.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>In his dreams, the guard at the club laughed at him. “You a virgin, Mando?” He threw his head back and laughed.</p><p> </p><p>Mando pushed him, hard, onto the floor, angrier than he normally let himself be on a mission. He wasn’t sure who he was looking for. Everyone in the club was looking at him, laughing. This wasn’t the discretion he normally hoped for. He pushed through them all, but they just laughed. Even the owner laughed, not caring where he was going, even as he punched more guards out of his way.</p><p> </p><p>Ahead of him was an archway leading to a hall. Elra whizzed past, from one side of the archway to the next. He followed her. “Hey,” he called after her. “Hey!”</p><p> </p><p>When he entered the hall, there was total darkness down the right, where she had disappeared. But he heard her laugh, her bare feet skidding against the floor, and followed. “You shouldn’t be here,” he growled. “They’ll use you.”</p><p> </p><p>She laughed and laughed and ran. Then, all of a sudden, she was crying. They were outside in the pouring rain of the Chandrila market. Elra was on the floor, hugging her knees, soaked through her clothes, looking up at him with blood coming from her eyes. “Why did you leave me?”</p><p> </p><p>Mando’s hand reached out, hesitated. “I—”</p><p> </p><p>“Why?” she screamed.</p><p> </p><p>From somewhere came the loud thud of marching boots. A group of stormtroopers came from around the corner. Elra scrambled to her feet and tried to run, but two caught up to her and grabbed hold of her between the two of them. She screamed and kicked her feet, and they began dragging her away.</p><p> </p><p>Mando tried to go for the gun in his holster, but he was frozen to the spot.</p><p> </p><p>They didn’t take her far, just around the corner of the alley. They all surrounded her in a circle. One pulled her shirt and tore the sleeve. Another reached forward and pulled at her pants. They continued to do it, crowding over her, shouting, spitting, laughing.</p><p> </p><p>He tried to move, pushing with all his might. He yelled, “Stop!” Finally, he managed enough strength and lunged forward, but just as he did, the market vanished like smoke.</p><p> </p><p>Around him was the pitch blackness of his ship. Machinery beeped around him, small squares of lights flashing. He was sitting up in his bed, breathing hard. He felt hot and sweaty. His shirt was soaked through. He ran a hand over his face and sighed.</p><p> </p><p>It had felt so real. More real than any dream he’d ever had before. He got up, walked around his ship with his blaster and checked every corner and crevice, just to make sure no one was there. His spine felt uneasy, as though there were someone behind him. But eventually he crawled back into bed.</p><p> </p><p>No more distractions, he decided. No more straying off course. He couldn’t save everyone. That wasn’t his job.  </p><p> </p>
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